As data trickled in before official results were announced late Sunday, exit polls showed far-right parties in France and Germany made impressive gains in the European Parliament elections.
The success of the far-right in the EU’s two largest member states has exceeded expectations of Italy’s far-right Brothers of Italy party, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
In Germany, the centre-right coalition has a decisive lead, but exit polls show the far-right Alternative for Germany making big gains, while the ruling Greens and Social Democrats are seeing losses.
In France, exit polls suggest that Marine Le Pen’s far-right party is on track to do better than in 2019 and come out on top in a third consecutive European election. Her National Rally (RN) is expected to win 32.4% of the vote, well ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance group, which got 15%. In 2019, the difference between their vote shares was less than 1%.
“Tonight, Emmanuel Macron is a weakened president,” RN leader Jordan Bardella said at a victory party on Sunday night, adding that the expected outcome showed French people want the EU to change course.
While the result was broadly as expected, Macron may take solace in the fact that he maintained his second place position with 14.3% of the vote, narrowly beating Raphael Glucksmann’s People’s Place/Socialist candidate.
Initial European Parliament projections suggest that MEPs from the four mainstream pro-European groups are expected to maintain their majority in Parliament, but with fewer seats than in 2019, making it harder for them to pass legislation.
The European People’s Party, the Social Democrats, the centrist Renew Group and the Greens are on track to win 451 of the 720 seats, or 62.6%, compared to 69.2% in the slightly smaller outgoing parliament. These groups often take opposing positions; for example, the Greens did not support Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president in 2019.
But exit polls showed widespread gains for the far right. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party was projected to come out on top with 27% of the vote, ahead of the conservative People’s Party and Social Democrats with 23.5% and 23% respectively.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ far-right party came in a close second to the Left-Green coalition. Wilders’ Freedom Party was expected to win with 17.7% of the vote, but came in second to the Left-Green coalition led by former European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans with 21.6%.
“To be right is good. To go right is always good. Go right!” Hungary’s hardline nationalist, anti-immigration Prime Minister Viktor Orban told reporters after the vote on Sunday.
In Germany, exit polls showed the current opposition Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union won 29.5% of the vote, while the AfD surged to 16.5% from 11% in 2019. The AfD’s success came despite a number of scandals, including its front-runner saying that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary organization, “were not all criminals.”
The parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition were in for a miserable night, with exit polls showing the Social Democrats’ support slumping to 14 percent, below their lowest approval rating in 2019. The Greens, who came second in 2019 with 20.5 percent, dropped to fourth place with 12 percent to 12.5 percent.
Tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets in cities including Berlin, Dresden and Munich to protest against right-wing extremism on Sunday, the final day of European parliamentary elections across 21 countries.
In Greece, the ruling centre-right New Democracy party is comfortably ahead with 30% of the vote, while the radical left Syriza party, which has been leading the country in the third EU bailout talks, received 16.7%, pushing the Socialists (Pasok) into third place with 12.4%.
The data is based on exit polls, which are not yet available for most countries. First provisional results are due to be published at 11:15 pm CET (22:15 pm BST).
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The centre-right European People’s Party is leading in Germany, Greece and Cyprus, but the results point to a shrinking overall majority for mainstream pro-European parties.
That could jeopardize passage of an ambitious climate bill and is also likely to complicate the hopes of German conservative European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to win a second term, as she would need the support of at least 361 new lawmakers.
In a tweet after the exit polls, von der Leyen said she was pleased with the CDU/CSU coalition’s “great result.” “We ran on the right theme, and the voters proved us right,” she said.
Bas Eickhout, a Dutch MEP and one of the Green Party’s two main candidates, said he was disappointed with the projected result in Germany. “In 2019 we got 10 percent of the vote. We knew we wouldn’t reach that number. I think around 7 or 8 percent would be a pretty good result for us,” he told reporters.
Voters in most EU countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, were called to the polls on Sunday, marking the culmination of a four-day election campaign that began last Thursday in the Netherlands.
The first elections since Britain left the EU gave an estimated 361 million Europeans the chance to vote, including for the first time 16-year-olds in Belgium and Germany, following 16-year-olds in Austria and Malta and 17-year-olds in Greece.
There were signs of higher turnout in some countries than last time: In France, 42.6% of voters had voted by 5pm, more than two percentage points higher than the same time in 2019. In Hungary, 33.1% of voters had cast their ballots by 1pm, up from 24% in 2019.
In 2019, against the backdrop of Britain’s chaotic Brexit negotiations and tensions with President Donald Trump’s White House, turnout rose to 50.6%, the highest in 25 years.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called on voters to go to the polls after the vote. [2008] “The financial crisis, the social response to the pandemic, the response to the various economic crises caused by the war in Ukraine and the Middle East wars all came from the same capital, Brussels,” the Socialist leader told reporters. “Do we want a Europe that remains united to face the challenges ahead, or do we choose a reactionary Europe of cuts, retreat and backlash?”
